Sangha members picket Deputy Commissioner’s office

Members of the Karnataka Prantha Krishi Koolikarara Sangha (KPKKS) picketed the Deputy Commissioner’s office here for more than three hours on Tuesday in protest against the alleged indifferent attitude of the district administration in distributing compensation to those who had lost their standing crops and houses owing to recent heavy rain and flash floods in the district.

Members of the KPKKS arrived in a procession at the Deputy Commissioner’s office under the leadership of their president Bhimshetty Yempalli and tried to enter the office complex of the Deputy Commissioner, when they were prevented by the police present there, by locking the main door. Later, the protestors squatted before the locked main gate in protest.

Misuse of funds

Mr. Yempalli said that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act funds were either being misused or not being used for the purpose for which it had been released by the gram panchayat. Members of panchayats consider the funds available under the MNREGA as their personal money and were misusing it. The agriculture labourers in need of employment in rural areas were being denied employment by gram panchayats, he alleged.

He claimed that the middlemen and vested interests were collecting bribes for allotment of houses under various housing schemes to people without houses in rural areas. The needy and the deserving people in rural areas were denied supply of subsidised foodgrains in fair price depots due to the failure of the authorities to distribute below the poverty line ration cards in time, he said.